I’m not funding a war 
if I pretend the money 
in my taxes are only going 
toward the roads that 
are actively collapsing. 

            Did you hear about the soldiers 
            who stole all of those tractors? 
            Did you hear the company 
            that makes those tractors, 
founded in a country not “fighting” in the war, 
            was able to brick the tractors 
            before they were at all functional? 

There are in-built kill switches in our devices. 

Think about your debts and 
            how much they weigh. 

            US company sends a shipment of bricks 
            equal to the weight of the hard drives they develop 
            to Singapore because 
they can get away with it. 

            Do you think if the bulldozer used 
            to build the Killdozer was an American make 
            it would have been stopped before 
            it was rendered inert too? 
Maybe the make made the autonomy possible. 

I’m not funding a war, 
            I’m in one. 

There’s no recourse to repair 
what we own within legality. 
            Amazon acquires OneMedical healthcare, 
            Amazon sells medical information to the police. 
It hasn’t happened yet but 
            the Ring Doorbells send footage 
            to the police without the consent 
            and the knowledge of the “owners,” 
and who makes the doorbells? 

User on twitter finds out the company 
            that they got their printer from 
            can disable its functionality from afar 
            because their debit card had expired. 
A friend can have their CPAP machine
            forcibly taken away from them 
            if they aren’t using it “enough.” 
John Deere pioneered the addition of remote 
            kill switches being installed in technology 
            and now the idea of one being installed 
            into a pacemaker is not 

            so far off. 

Rendering a piece of technology inert 
            is called “bricking” it. 
            Are you excited to talk to a friend and 
            because of the status of their debts 
a brick is weighed into their body? 

Think about what you owe 
and how much it weighs, 
think about what you give away 
            and where it goes, think about 
            how much choice you really have, 

if you have choice at all. 
            Marvin Heemeyer’s choices were diminished 
            until there was nothing left but to build Killdozer 
            but even so he was allowed to build it 
            without the only options he had left becoming bricks. 

It’s called a siege when you decide 
to wait for your enemy to run out of resources. 
            It’s called “scorched earth” to destroy anything 
            that might be useful to whomever you’re fighting against. 
            Who was the first brick at Stonewall? 
We got past Act Up and now you can’t get 
a monkeypox vaccine unless you can prove 
you’re a gay man who has sex with other men. 

            Did you know you can be arrested for sodomy still? 
            Did you know some John Deere tractors only work 
            if the same farmer is buying Monsanto approved seed? 

Marvin Heemeyer said “It is interesting to observe 
            that I was never caught.”
            Maybe we will get a justified right to repair, 
            maybe the earth will die before then. 
            Scorched Earth. 

We’re in an overwhelming heat wave, 
we’re in the coldest summer of the rest of our lives. 
They don’t make the tools we need 
            to become autonomous anymore 
            because they can ship us 
            our weight in debts instead. 

            What happens when we learn 
            that we can’t use our refrigerators 
because we’re late on rent? 
            What are you going to do 
            if you’re trying to shoot yourself 
            in the head and the gun won’t go off
because your sold healthcare data 
informed the manufacturer 
that because of severe depression 

the guns you own will become bricked? 

What are you going to do 
when you can’t do anything else 
but lower the DIY armor 
            over the caddy of your killdozer, 
            only to find that it’s been rendered 
            a series of bricks? 

            “It is interesting to observe 
            that I was never caught ... 
            somehow their vision was clouded” 

You, selling roses out of a silver grocery cart

You, in the park, feeding the pigeons
You cheering for the bees

You with cats in your voice in the morning, feeding cats

You protecting the river   You are who I love
delivering babies, nursing the sick

You with henna on your feet and a gold star in your nose

You taking your medicine, reading the magazines

You looking into the faces of young people as they pass, smiling and saying, Alright! which, they know it, means I see you, Family. I love you. Keep on.

You dancing in the kitchen, on the sidewalk, in the subway waiting for the train because Stevie Wonder, Héctor Lavoe, La Lupe

You stirring the pot of beans, you, washing your father’s feet

You are who I love, you
reciting Darwish, then June

Feeding your heart, teaching your parents how to do The Dougie, counting to 10, reading your patients’ charts

You are who I love, changing policies, standing in line for water, stocking the food pantries, making a meal

You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the January streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying: YOUR CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME

You are who I love, you struggling to see

You struggling to love or find a question

You better than me, you kinder and so blistering with anger, you are who I love, standing in the wind, salvaging the umbrellas, graduating from school, wearing holes in your shoes

You are who I love
weeping or touching the faces of the weeping

You, Violeta Parra, grateful for the alphabet, for sound, singing toward us in the dream

You carrying your brother home
You noticing the butterflies

Sharing your water, sharing your potatoes and greens

You who did and did not survive
You who cleaned the kitchens
You who built the railroad tracks and roads
You who replanted the trees, listening to the work of squirrels and birds, you are who I love
You whose blood was taken, whose hands and lives were taken, with or without your saying
Yes, I mean to give. You are who I love.

You who the borders crossed
You whose fires
You decent with rage, so in love with the earth
You writing poems alongside children

You cactus, water, sparrow, crow      You, my elder
You are who I love,
summoning the courage, making the cobbler,

getting the blood drawn, sharing the difficult news, you always planting the marigolds, learning to walk wherever you are, learning to read wherever you are, you baking the bread, you come to me in dreams, you kissing the faces of your dead wherever you are, speaking to your children in your mother’s languages, tootsing the birds

You are who I love, behind the library desk, leaving who might kill you, crying with the love songs, polishing your shoes, lighting the candles, getting through the first day despite the whisperers sniping fail fail fail

You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for reparations

You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

You are who I love, singing Leonard Cohen to the snow, you with glitter on your face, wearing a kilt and violet lipstick

You are who I love, sighing in your sleep

You, playing drums in the procession, you feeding the chickens and humming as you hem the skirt, you sharpening the pencil, you writing the poem about the loneliness of the astronaut

You wanting to listen, you trying to be so still

You are who I love, mothering the dogs, standing with horses

You in brightness and in darkness, throwing your head back as you laugh, kissing your hand

You carrying the berbere from the mill, and the jug of oil pressed from the olives of the trees you belong to

You studying stars, you are who I love
braiding your child’s hair

You are who I love, crossing the desert and trying to cross the desert

You are who I love, working the shifts to buy books, rice, tomatoes,

bathing your children as you listen to the lecture, heating the kitchen with the oven, up early, up late

You are who I love, learning English, learning Spanish, drawing flowers on your hand with a ballpoint pen, taking the bus home

You are who I love, speaking plainly about your pain, sucking your teeth at the airport terminal television every time the politicians say something that offends your sense of decency, of thought, which is often

You are who I love, throwing your hands up in agony or disbelief, shaking your head, arguing back, out loud or inside of yourself, holding close your incredulity which, yes, too, I love    I love

your working heart, how each of its gestures, tiny or big, stand beside my own agony, building a forest there

How “Fuck you” becomes a love song

You are who I love, carrying the signs, packing the lunches, with the rain on your face

You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love   You are who I love  You and you and you are who